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From: don@allegra.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Latin and Loglan
Message-ID: <1850@allegra.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 28-Sep-83 13:47:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: allegra.1850
Posted: Wed Sep 28 13:47:47 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Sep-83 06:19:01 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 25

First, "Non Serviam" means "I will not serve".  Specifically, it is the
sin of Pride committed by Satan.  (I am an atheist, but collect such
trivia.) One sees this phrase now and then in Roman Catholic
inscriptions.

I recently read James Cooke Brown's article on Loglan (in Scientific
American, June 1960).  I have two questions.  First, why bother
creating a whole new vocabulary.  Second, supposing you just use
English words with the new rules.  What is gained?

Actually, some friends and I have talked about how one might improve
English.  English already stands out over other European languages
because it has a larger vocabulary, less useless grammer (gender, case
endings, etc.) and very flexible rules for using words (one can "ride a
thumb" or "thumb a ride" for instance).  We had a couple ideas:

Loglan's multiple "it"s might be nice (It1 gave it2 to it3).  Eliminate
last vestiges of gender by throwing out gendered pronouns (he, she,
his, hers...).  Stop putting the "s" after verbs in third person
singular ("He drive a car").  Stop modifying nouns when they are plural
("many cup on table").  Make all verbs regular (they are in Swedish,
for example,where one says "I are, you are, he are, we are...").

Any other ideas?  If anyone wants to add "features" I will probably
disagree.